17

Landon

‘You were just a rebound,’ Clark Richards said, Monday morning, right before the homeroom bell rang. ‘Don’t you get it, Maxfield? Yeah, I f**ked up – but I came to my senses. She’s mine. Girls like Melody don’t stick with guys like you, freak.’

Guys like you.

Under his arm, Melody stared at the hallway tiles and said nothing. No explanation. No see ya. Nothing.

‘Want me to kick his ass?’ Boyce asked when I threw a metal, lidded trash can in the men’s room ten minutes later, denting a stall door and nearly knocking it off its hinges.

Hands gripping the sink’s edge and swearing I would not cry or puke or scream the obscenities rolling through my brain, I shook my head, once. Clark Richards was just being the dick he’d always been.

Melody was the one I let inside. If anyone’s ass should be kicked, it should be mine.

I woke up in my bed the next day with no idea how I got there. My phone was dead, so I didn’t know what time it was, but there was light under the pantry door and the house was quiet. The previous school day was a blur, and the hours after dark, blank. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Boyce and I had skipped out after shop and he drove to the beach, which was still littered with remnants of spring breakers – wrappers, plastic bags, cans, the occasional abandoned beach towel or bikini top. The sky was light grey. Overcast. We sat on the rock near one of our usual hangouts and stared out over the water.

Boats motored across my line of vision, but my eyes wouldn’t follow anything. A family with a blanket, picnic basket and cooler had staked out a spot near the water. Brother and sister were the same size – twins, maybe. Preschool age. They kept daring each other to submerge in the still-cool water. They’d each taken a few turns darting up to it. Neither got further than their ankles before tearing back out like there were ice cubes in the water.

‘My offer to kick his ass stands, man.’ Boyce took a drag on his cigarette.

I shook my head. ‘She’s not worth it.’ The words were untrue. I knew it, but it didn’t matter, so I didn’t correct them.

I couldn’t fathom what she had wanted from me. Was I only a ploy to make him jealous? Get him back? Had she wanted to escape her life but wasn’t fearless enough to actually do it? Or maybe it was more straightforward than that. Maybe I’d imagined anything between us, and I’d never been good enough for her. I was filler, nothing more.

‘Still thinking about getting your tongue lanced?’ Boyce asked. The smoke from his cigarette cleared suddenly from a gust off the gulf that lifted my hair and dropped it forward. I twitched it out of my eyes. Boyce’s military-short hair didn’t move.

The little kids by the water threw their hands in the air and squealed, chasing each other in circles. It was hard to believe that I’d ever been that small. That young. That happy and clueless. They had pain ahead. Heartbreak. Loss. They didn’t know and I didn’t want them to – but at the same time, I hated that I hadn’t known. I’d taken everything for granted – my mother, my friends in Alexandria, playing hockey. I dreamed about the future because that’s what people persuade you to do when you’re a kid, but that’s the biggest lie of all – that you can plan. Reality is, you have no f**king clue what’s coming and neither do they.

A few weeks ago, Grandpa was teaching me to drive on Sunday afternoons. He was there every night to make dinner and buffer the sour desolation between Dad and me. Yesterday, I thought I was falling in love with Melody Dover. Now he was gone, and so was whatever ignorant, naïve thing I’d felt for her. And I should have known better. I felt like the stupidest f**k alive because I should have known better.

‘Fuck, no,’ I answered Boyce and downed the last of my soda. ‘Lip, I think.’

Boyce made a horrified face. The guy wasn’t afraid of anything – except needles. It was kind of hilarious.

I pointed at him. ‘That right there – that’s why. Everyone who looks at it will have that reaction.’

‘So … you’re doing it to tell everyone that you’re certifiable and like pain?’

‘Okay.’ I offered my empty can and he dropped his cigarette butt into it. Boyce was inexplicably anti-litter – an odd, singular holdover from his days as a cub scout. Before his mother quit this town, his father, his brother and him. Before his dad started using his sons as punching bags, and things like scouting were no longer an option.

‘Huh. Makes a weird sort of sense. I like it.’

He got a text from Rick, who’d skimmed enough off last week’s merchandise to party tonight for free. ‘Thompson’s got molly and weed out the ass. He says bring beer. Up for it?’

‘Fuck yeah. Why not.’

How Boyce typed anything coherent with his Neanderthal thumbs was a mystery, but they flew over the surface of his phone. ‘Score. We’ve got a few hours to kill. Let’s go get your truck from the lot and get some food.’

I’d forgotten about the truck. It was alone in the school lot when we arrived, with FREAK key-carved into the driver’s door.

‘That’s it,’ Boyce said, staring at it. ‘I’m kickin’ his ass.’

I didn’t care what Clark Richards did or said to me, but my truck was an extension of my grandfather, and he’d disrespected him. ‘Get him invited tonight, Wynn.’

Boyce had an evil grin that was all too familiar from my ninth-grade memory vault – if he’d sprouted horns and a villain moustache along with it, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

‘Thatta boy, Maxfield,’ he said, thumbs flying, texting someone. ‘Consider it done.’

According to the bathroom mirror, I’d had a hell of a night. Black eye. Swollen nose. Bruised jaw. The wall clock in the kitchen said it was early afternoon, so school was officially ditched for the day. I plugged my phone in, drank a Coke, started coffee and went to take a shower while it brewed.

My ribs were sore and bruised, too, and my knuckles were scuffed raw. I smeared ointment on to everything still bloody after the soap and water, before pulling on dark grey sweatpants and a red-and-white baseball tee, wincing from the sharp pain in my side the whole time. Deep breaths were agony and coughing was worse. I weighed the possibility of a cracked rib. Head in my hands at the kitchen table, I stared into my empty mug and tried to recall how I’d got that particular injury.

When we’d gone to buy beer, our usual clerk had been out. The woman across the counter wasn’t willing to give us the benefit of a doubt that we were older than we looked. ‘Scram,’ she said, heaving the twelve-pack of Bud Light to her side of the counter. Her mouth hadn’t moved from its disgruntled, horizontal line.